Video: ST 2110-41 Fast Metadata – Under the Hood and Applications

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Why would you decode 12Gbps of data in order to monitor for an occasional SCTE switching signal or closed captions? SMPTE 2110 separates video, audio and metadata freeing up workflows to be more flexible. But so far, SMPTE 2110 only defines how to take the metadata used in SDI under SMPTE 291. The point of freeing up workflows is to allow innovation, so this talk looks at SMPTE ST 2110-41 which allows for more types of data to be carried, time synchronised with the other essences.

Paul Briscoe joins us at the podium to explain why we need to extend SMPTE ST 2110-40 beyond SDI-compatible metadata. He starts by explaining how ST 2110 was intended to work well with SDI. Since SDI already has a robust system for Ancillary Data (ANC Data), it made sense for 2110 to support that first in a 100% compatible way. One of the key characteristics of metadata is that it’s synchronised to the other media and we expect the decoders to be selective over what it acts on, explains Paul. The problem that he sees, however is that if you wanted to send some XML, JSON or other data which has never been included in the SDI signal, there is no way to send that within 2110 and keep the synchronisation. To prove his point, Paul puts up the structure of ST-291M in 2110-40 which still has references to lines and horizontal offsets. Furthermore, he points out that future 2110 workflows aren’t going to need to be tied to SDI-compatible metadata.

The Fast Metadata (FMX) proposal is to allow arbitrary metadata streams which can be time-aligned with a media stream. It would provide a standardised encoding method, be extensible, minimise IP address use and retain the option of being interoperable with ST 291 if needed.

Having chosen the KLV data structure, which is well known and scalable, SMPTE provides for this to be delivered with a timestamp and even early so that processing can be done ahead of time. This opens the door to carrying XMl, JSON and other data structure.

Paul explains how this has been implemented as an RTP stream hence using the RTP timestamps. Within the stream there are blobs of data. Paul explains the structure of a blob and how payloads which are smaller than a blob, as well as those which are larger, can be dealt with. Buffering and SDPs need to be supported, after all, this is a 2110 stream.

After doing into the detail of 2110-41, Paul explains there is a 2110-42 standard which can carry technical metadata about the stream. It provides in-band messaging of important stream details but is not intended to replace IS-04 or SDPs.

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Speakers

Paul Briscoe Paul Briscoe
Televisionary Consulting

Video: How to build two large Full-IP OB trucks (during COVID-19)

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

It’s never been easy building a large OB van. Keeping within axel weight, getting enough technology in and working within a tight project timeline, not to mention keeping the expanding sections cool and water-tight is no easy task. Add on that social distancing thanks to SARS-CoV-2 and life gets particularly tricky.

This project was intriguing before Covid-19 because it called for two identical SMPTE ST-2110 IP trucks to be built, explains Geert Thoelen from NEP Belgium. Both are 16-camera trucks with 3 EVS each. The idea being that people could walk into truck A on Saturday and do a show then walk into truck B on Sunday and work in exactly the same show but on a different match. Being identical, when these trucks will be delivered to Belgium public broadcaster RTBF, production crews won’t need to worry about getting a better or worse truck then the other programmes.. The added benefit is that weight is reduced compared to SDI baseband. The trucks come loaded with Sony Cameras, Arista Switches, Lawo audio, EVS replays and Riedel intercoms. It’s ready to take a software upgrade for UHD and offers 32 frame-synched and colour-corrected inputs plus 32 outputs.

Broadcast Solutions have worked with NEP Belgium for many years, an ironically close relationship which became a key asset in this project which had to be completed under social distancing rules. Working open book and having an existing trust between the parties, we hear, was important in completing this project on time. Broadcast Solutions separated internet access for the truck to access the truck as it was being built with 24/7 remote access for vendors.

Axel Kühlem fro broadcast solutions address a question from the audience of the benefits of 2110. He confirms that weight is reduced compared to SDI by about half, comparing like for like equipment. Furthermore, he says the power is reduced. The aim of having two identical trucks is to allow them to be occasionally joined for large events or even connected into RTBF’s studio infrastructure for those times when you just don’t have enough facilities. Geert points out that IP on its own is still more expensive than baseband, but you are paying for the ability to scale in the future. Once you count the flexibility it affords both the productions and the broadcaster, it may well turn out cheaper over its lifetime.

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Speakers

Axel Kühlem Axel Kühlem
Senior System Architect
Broadcast Solutions
Geert Thoelen Geert Thoelen
Technical Director,
NEP Belgium

Video: AV1 – A Reality Check

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Released in 2018, AV1 had been a little over two years in the making at the Alliance of Open Media founded by industry giants including Google, Amazon, Mozilla, Netflix. Since then work has continued to optimise the toolset to bring both encoding and decoding down to real-world levels.

This talk brings together AOM members Mozilla, Netflix, Vimeo and Bitmovin to discus where AV1’s up to and to answer questions from the audience. After some introductions, the conversation turns to 8K. The Olympics are the broadcast industry’s main driver for 8K at the moment, though it’s clear that Japan and other territories aim to follow through with further deployments and uses.

“AV1 is the 8K codec of choice” 

Paul MacDougall, Bitmovin
 CES 2020 saw a number of announcements like this from Samsung regarding AV1-enabled 8K TVs. In this talk from Google, Matt Frost from Google Chrome Media explains how YouTube has found that viewer retention is higher with VP9-delivered videos which he attributes to VP9’s improved compression over AVC which leads to quicker start times, less buffering and, often, a higher resolution being delivered to the user. AV1 is seen as providing these same benefits over AVC without the patent problems that come with HEVC.

 
It’s not all about resolution, however, points out Paul MacDougall from BitMovin. Resolution can be useful, for instance in animations. For animated content, resolution is worth having because it accentuates the lines which add intelligibility to the picture. For some content, with many similar textures, grass, for instance, then quality through bitrate may be more useful than adding resolution. Vittorio Giovara from Vimeo agrees, pointing out that viewer experience is a combination of many factors. Though it’s trivial to say that a high-resolution screen of unintended black makes for a bad experience, it is a great reminder of things that matter. Less obviously, Vittorio highlights the three pillars of spatial, temporal and spectral quality. Temporal refers to upping the bitrate, spatial is, indeed, the resolution and spectral refers to bit-depth and colour-depth know as HDR and Wide Colour Gamut (WCG).

Nathan Egge from Mozilla acknowledges that in their 2018 code release at NAB, the unoptimized encoder which was claimed by some to be 3000 times slower than HEVC, was ’embarrassing’, but this is the price of developing in the open. The panel discusses the fact that the idea of developing compression is to try out approaches until you find a combination that work well. While you are doing that, it would be a false economy to be constantly optimising. Moreover, Netflix’s Anush Moorthy points out, it’s a different set of skills and, therefore, a different set of people who optimise the algorithms.

Questions fielded by the panel cover whether there are any attempts to put AV1 encoding or decoding into GPU. Power consumption and whether TVs will have hardware or software AV1 decoding. Current in-production AV1 uses and AVC vs VVC (compression benefit Vs. royalty payments).

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Speakers

Vittorio Giovara Vittorio Giovara
Manager, Engineering – Video Technology
Vimeo
Nathan Egge Nathan Egge
Video Codec Engineer,
Mozilla
Paul MacDougall Paul MacDougall
Principal Sales Engineer,
Bitmovin
Anush Moorthy Anush Moorthy
Manager, Video and Image Encoding
Netflix
Tim Siglin Tim Siglin
Founding Executive Director
Help Me Stream, USA

Video: Intro into IPv6

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

It’s certainly taken its time to get here, but IPv6 is increasingly used on the internet. Google now report that just under 30% of the traffic to Google is IPv6 and both Akamai and APNIC show UK IPv6 readiness at around 30% with the US around 50%. Deployment within most enterprise environments, however, is often non existant with many products in the broadcast sector not supporting it at all.

Alex Latzko is an IPv6 evangelist and stands before us to introduce those who are IPv4 savvy to IPv6. For those of us who learnt it once, this is an accessible refresher. Those new to the topic will be able to follow, too, if they have a decent grasp of IPv4. Depending on where you are in the broadcast chain, the impetus to understand IPv6 may be strong, so grab your copy of the slides and let’s watch.

There are no broadcast addresses in IPv6

Alex Latzko
Alex, from ServerCentral Turing Group starts by explaining IPv6 addresses. Familiar to some as a far-too-long mix of hexadecimal numbers and colons, Alex says this is a benefit given the vast range of numbers possible allowing much more flexibility in the way we use the IPv6 address space over IPv4. He takes us through the meanings of the addresses starting with well-known tricks like abbreviating runs of zeros with a double colon, but less well-known ones too, like how to embed IPv4 addresses within an IPv6 address as well as the prefixes for multicast traffic. Alex goes on to show the importance of MAC addresses in IPv6. EUI-64 is a building block used for IPv6 functions which creates a 64-bit string from the 48-bit MAC address. This then allows us to create the important ‘link local’ address.

The last half of the presentation starts with a look at the CIDR prefix lengths that are in use and, is some cases, agreed as standards on the internet at large and in customer networks. For instance, internet routing works on blocks of /48 or larger. Within customer networks, blocks are often /64.

In IPv6, ARP is no longer. ARP can’t work because it uses broadcast addresses which don’t exist within the IPV6 world. This gives rise to the Neighbour Discovery Protocol which allows you to do something very similar. Specifically, it allows you to find your neighbours, routers, detect duplicate addresses and more.

Alex covers whether ‘NAT’ is possible in IPv6 and then looks at how routing works. Starting by imploring us to use ‘proper hierarchy’, he explains that there is no need to conserve IPv6 space. In terms of routing, the landscape is varied in terms of protocols to use. RIP is out of the window, as v1 and v2 have no knowledge of IPv6, OPSFv3 is a beacon of hope, though deployment is often in parallel with the IPv6-ignorant OSPFv2. The good news is that IS-IS, as well as BGP, are perfectly happy with either.

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Speaker

Alex Latzko Alex Latzko
Lead Network Architect
ServerCentral Turing Group